The reason I was so heartbroken at WrestleMania wasn’t because of how I feel about how World Wrestling Entertainment runs or what they like or dislike, or what they do or don’t want to do with the crowd, and it’s certainly not because my favorite wrestler in the world used to wrestle on the independent circuit so no matter how much he does in WWE he’s “an indy guy” and I have the baggage of being THAT guy’s fan whenever I talk about him … it’s because those two guys could have THIS MATCH, and they could’ve had it on the biggest stage their industry provides. And also because I could’ve f**king watched it live. Or at least looked at a palm tree while it was happening near me.

Daniel Bryan versus Sheamus, 2-out-of-3 falls, was f**king fantastic. When I say “this is the match we should’ve gotten at WrestleMania”, I mean it … Sheamus should’ve won, but only after Daniel Bryan got to be the Best In The World for 20 minutes for anybody paying attention. I’m so happy that he’s found this success in WWE. I’m happy that we’ve got a new Chris Benoit — a guy who has worked so hard for so long against all sorts of physical and business-related odds to become an unreasonably dependable and popular guy who has great matches with everyone, and who will always be the underdog (and OUR underdog at that!) because we followed him up from the beginning. Only he’s better than Benoit because he didn’t grow up idolizing a dude who’d hold a gun in his wife’s face to f**k with her and if he flips out and kills his wife and child, at least he’ll be taking out one of the Bella Twins.

But yeah, this is our WWE match of the year to date. I don’t care how emotionally involved we all got in Inappropriate Ponytail Theater, this one involved everything that was good about wrestling and almost none of the bad stuff. Let Daniel Bryan wrestle for you forever, please, and keep his brain healthy.

Best: And Now A Kind Word About Sheamus

It takes two to have a great match, right?

I’ve gotten a lot of grief for what’s being called “the Sheamus Hate” (sample comment, “I don’t get all the Sheamus hate!”). The wrestling fan in me hated him for giving me the closest thing to a “Jim Cornette screwing the Rock n’ Roll Express out of the tag team titles and making six year old Brandon cry” since I was seven. I will and have in the past acknowledged that he is a talented, hoss-brand pro wrestler and that I bare no sincere animosity toward him as a guy. I don’t like his fat guy hats, but that’s probably a cultural thing.

So I’m officially retiring the “f**k Sheamus” initiative, at least for now, in the hopes that he’s just gonna meander into a Ricardo Rodriguez distraction in a month or two and get his arm broken by Alberto Del Rio anyway. You’re an okay guy, Sheamus, and until I pick up WrestleMania 28 and blu-ray and have to watch it again, we’re okay forever.

Photo credit: WWE.com

Best: ‘Sup, CM Punk’s Sister

you know where i could score some crank

Or, “so hey, do you know ace steel? that’s cool”

WWE has conditioned me to expect the worst from suddenly appearing family. Through some combination of Stephanie McMahon getting rape-married, Torrie Wilson’s dad getting sexed to death, Mr. Cena getting kicked in the head and Randy Orton’s harem of wives being harassed and threatened in their home I’ve come to see a sudden family member appearance as a horrible red flag for pro graps bullsh*t and spent most of the match going “okay, here’s where she hops the rail and slaps Punk in the face and Jericho gets the win”. That’s a horrible way to watch a show, isn’t it?

Also, I’m glad I’m not the only person who thought it was weird that CM Punk’s sister would call him “Punk”. I get kayfabe and all, but “CM Punk” is clearly not the dude’s name and he outed himself as a Phil like eight months ago.

Worst: When I Fight In The Streets Of Chicago I Wear Skinny Jeans And Brandish A Fire Extinguisher

This was the best ever opportunity for Punk to go back to the basketball shorts as “street fighting clothes”, but I guess “jeans with some pads over them and a belt to keep them up BUT NO SHIRT the shirt would be too constricting” is a better choice.

Not to go off on a tangent or anything, but one of the things I miss most from Several Years Ago Ring Of Honor is the emphasis the company put on what their wrestlers were wearing and when. This is a really underrated storytelling technique … for example, BJ Whitmer showed up to a barbed wire match in his normal ring gear, and the story was that he was so tough and hardcore he didn’t care if the barbs tore his skin and wasn’t about to put a pussy layer of protection between him and shredded stab wounds. Christopher Daniels showed up to a street fight wearing dress clothes once, I can’t remember if that was ROH or back when TNA wasn’t Hogan’d to sh*t.

Anyway, it was weird to see Punk dress like he was going to a gay bar and Jericho dressing like he had to duck out in the middle and hit a Fozzy show across the street. It is also weird that nearly 20 years after the onset of “hardcore wrestling” popularity we’re still using the spray from a f**king fire extinguisher as a move. It is dumb. Stop doing it. If a wrestler sprays you with a fire extinguisher, continue being fine, yank the thing out of his hands and bash him in the face with it.

Best: But Seriously, This Pay-Per-View Is Really, Really Good

I didn’t think Punk and Jericho at Extreme Rules was as good as it was at WrestleMania, but it was really good. It also confirmed my belief that Daniel Bryan and Sheamus got 18 seconds at WrestleMania because they wanted Punk/Jericho to be the Savage/Steamboat to Rock/Cena’s Hogan/Andre, because Sheamus and Daniel Bryan blew them out of the f**king water last night. If that’d happened at Mania, Punk wouldn’t have gotten his Bret Hart and Ultimate Warrior pleasing moment and Jericho would’ve continued to be overshadowed by literally everyone else.

I was watching this at about 2am last night, and I reverted to a 10 year-old kid when Big Show fell through the table. That with the Beautiful Disaster off the table made that the match of the night for me.

@Brandon – My reasoning goes like this: Both Kelly and Velvet are absolutely horrific in the ring and neither of them can run the ropes to save their life, however I present this piece of undeniable scientific evidence: Pigeons being let loose > squint, smile, and point.

A friend of a friend commented how Chicago is the best crowd for WWE currently which I disagree with. MSG is and always will be #1 until they consistently fail to show up. With that being said it was an excellent crowd last night but MitB ’11 gave me chills , last nights did not.

1. Kharma signs with WWE, is one of the best wrestlers in the world, can have good-to-great matches with women who are way worse than Kelly Kelly (Velvet Sky, I’m looking in YOUR direction).
2. Vince sees her backstage for the first time and says, “oh, f–k. Why didn’t anyone tell me she’s black???”
3. Kharma gets pregnant in real life.
4. Vince has his out.
/fixed

I’ve been really down on the WWE lately but last night went a long way towards making me feel like the happy 8 year old boy I want to feel like when I watch wrestling.

I say this a lot but this should be so easy. Make us care about the wrestlers and then let them wrestle. The rest will take care of itself. They largely did that last night.

I’ll nitpick more later and elsewhere, but I was very happy last night. I also got to spend the PPV last night with some great With Leather Daddies and it was a lot of fun. If you’re in the DC area you should hit me up and we can organize something!

I actually thought the Lesnar/Cena finish was pretty good, and well-sold by Lesnar stumbling around punch-drunk, pretending to nearly punch a fan who slapped his back, etc. I mean Lesnar DID jump face-first into a swinging chained fist, then was slammed kidney-first onto a piece of what we should all pretend is steel, even if it’s not.

I’d read someone in the thread last night saying the AA onto the steps was like a paramedic gingerly laying someone onto the ground but I thought it was pretty well executed, watching it in real time/subsequent replays. Cena got a little lift on it and Lesnar’s back came down pretty flush on the metal. Not exactly powerbomb through the ceiling of the HELL CELL brutal but not bad at all.

I’m with you for the most part. Cena winning that way didn’t really bother me. Had he gone through his full routine it would have been the worst, but he sold it well.

The only thing that bothers me is that both Cena and Sheamus won the same way: Got their asses kicked and only once their opponent got a little too cocky were they able to get some momentum back and pull off their finisher before leaving with massive arm injuries.

“He should be exactly like Clavicus Vile in ‘Skyrim’ … he’s all “Raaaandyyyy, RKO BARBAS”, and whether Barbas gets R’d-KO or not he becomes a part of the statue and we go finish a different quest somewhere else.”

Also:
“And more importantly, why did it take somebody until 1 day before their contract was up to figure out you could beat Twin Magic by just attacking the second Bella?”
This. Forever. I legitimately stood up and applauded my computer.

Question: Am I the only one that thought Lesnar legit went off the rails and just wanted to come and legit beat the shit out of Cena because he’s an insecure asshole who just wanted to prove some point? I seriously thought it was real for like 5 minutes last night.

Also, the DBry v Sheamus match felt like a 45 minute match and I mean that in the best possible way.

As much as we like to joke about the Miz’s career being on a downward spiral the picking him to try out the “pre-show” match was not a demotion as much as it seemed like a company asking their “go to” guy to try something new. Now he is off to do one of their Direct to DVD movies…

Oh indeed. When it comes to the professional part of what he does, ‘Hey Miz, we’d like you to take a few weeks off from flying around the ring and taking bumps to go sit in a trailer and say lines for a bit everyday’ doesnt sound like much punishment.

I was something like sick and slept for the better part of 18 hours. Catching up on watching the show itself but stopped doing that to read the b/w because seriously. Feel like I let people down by not being in the discussion thread.

Let me put on my gigantic wrestling nerd hat and explain why I feel Cena winning last night was a bad way to book it. Granted I have zero influence nor will I ever have any influence on pretty much anything but I digress:
-They skipped over the 1st & 2nd act of storytelling 101 and went straight to the Ewoks ending.
-If Cena had already planned on taking an extended break before Brock kimura’d his arm for 20 minutes they could have worked that into the storyline. I can’t recall the last time they went babyface with his status getting the “legit” injury at the hands of the monster heel. Work that in, give Jeeeeeern the time off he needs/deserves while feeding Brock everyone but Punk/Danielson in the meantime. Have Marine 3:Marine with a vengeance come back at the Vengeance PPV and AA Brock off the roof. WWE needs to allow their feuds some time to simmer for a true payoff.
-Passion of the Cena has gotten old. Everyone expects the kickouts, the 5 moves of doom, all that crap There has to be a time where hustle, loyatly blabbity blah won’t/can’t work. This was that time. No one else is coming down the pipeline. There aren’t any huge indy workers coming in that Vince won’t bury ahead of time and no Japanese star will risk coming here out of fear of being name Kawasaki Hiroshima Godzilla or whatever the fuck Vince thinks is funny.
I did enjoy the PPV though and thought it was well done and glad to see the “I HAVE TIL 5!” make a comeback. Great writeup Brandon

I missed the live discussion because I was watching with friends and didn’t want to be a weird nerdlinger with a laptop.

Lesnar’s first kimura made me laugh since he had no body control. Maybe if he was trying to use it as a sweep to get on top of Cena, it might work. The idea of him using a kimura at all seemed a little odd to me, but I figure it’s a little more of a brute-force move than some other submissions. I would have liked to see him use some catch-as-catch-can techniques, though. See what Josh Barnett pulls off, maybe some toe holds.

I often miss your THESTINGER third person thoughts, but that was before the live discussions came about, so perhaps they had their place in the long-long ago when we could only talk about RAW after RAW was over?

Has anyone ever did that thing where you’re signaling to a pretend timekeeper to ring a pretend bell because something awesome just happened. That was me reacting to Cody Rhodes winning last night. It was the hardest I’ve marked in a while. I was just so damn excited when Big Show stepped through that table like a damn oaf. Kinda reminds me why I watch rasslin to be honest. That, plus Daniel Bryan and Sheamus being the match of the night.

It’s rather sad and scary that the post-WM PPV is turning in to the better PPV every year. Last year had a good Cena/Miz/Morrison cage match after the terrible WM main event (plus Christian/Del Rio in a ladder match). WrestleMania is designed for Hornswoggle to rap and Snoop Dogg to show up in backstage segments and 13 seconds, whereas XTREME BACKLASH or whatever ends up being where you’d want to put your money for professional wrestling.

I would bring a sign to the next WWE event in Las Vegas except I am usually in the back. Can you nonchalantly walk to the front row, show off your WithsLeather-related sign for the cameras, then nonchalantly walk back to your seat w/o being kicked out of the arena?

Great PPV, that I agree with. However, I disagree with a few of your points:

-Cena going over Brock makes no fucking sense. At all. It’s not the right call in any way whatsoever. You spend $5 million dollars bringing back this monster, and you job him like that!? In less then a month!? To a guy who’s leaving!? WHY!? And it wasn’t even a cheat win; Brock gave EVERYTHING to Cena, and Cena still won. That killed the heat, dead. Brock should have won, Cena should have left, Brock continues to dominate until superhero Cena comes back to save the day in the blow-off match. You don’t job Brock now! Nobody gives a damn about Cena/Brock anymore, Cena won! Absolutely terrible booking.

-The fire extinguisher was funny. I laughed. It’s dumb, but its the kind of dumb I can roll with. Those clothes however…

-Cena’s absence is so HHH can come in and feud with Brock now. And probably beat him, too.

Did anyone else think Cena/Lesnar was awesome from start to finish? We just found a bar in my hometown that shows the PPV’s, so I’m worried that I can’t properly judge these things anymore due to the socializing and poor sound, but I left thinking it was incredible.

As a Brit who spends his Tuesday mornings trawling back through the Open Thread to read EVERY SINGLE comment, it’s great to now be in Australia, where it’s a civilised hour and where I can follow this as it happens. You guys are the BEST. I won’t be commenting myself much though, because (a) I’m not actually watching RAW and (b) I’m supposed to be reading about Einstein.

I actually liked the end of the Lesnar/Cena match. I saw it like this…

It wasn’t Super Cena that won the match. It was a thoroughly beaten Cena beating a dazed, (after trying to kill himself with that flying lariat) overly confident, Brock, who should have ended the match five minutes in, with a desperate, chain-wrapped, sucker-punch.

My secret best of the show was Johnny just up and leaving Eve’s celebration. I would love to spend six months watching Eve try to seduce JL, only to fail because he’s either too oblivious or too disinterested.

I’ve gotten a lot of grief for what’s being called “the Sheamus Hate” (sample comment, “I don’t get all the Sheamus hate!”). The wrestling fan in me hated him for giving me the closest thing to a “Jim Cornette screwing the Rock n’ Roll Express out of the tag team titles and making six year old Brandon cry” since I was seven.

I think Sheamus was an unfortunate bystander to the whole “screwing Bryan” thing. He wasn’t really unlikable before that, and then he beat Bryan in 18 seconds, and all of a sudden he gets booed mercilessly. Yeah, the 18 second match wasn’t necessarily a great thing that happened, especially in the eyes of Bryan fans, but does Sheamus deserve the boos for that? I don’t know, it’s like booing Nash for ending Goldberg’s streak, even though Scott Hall did most of the damage. It’s not Nash’s fault. Well, it is, but not in a bad way.